Crow Busters Forum

I'll go with the new passages ,i discovered last year.
They are still fresh , and the crows unaware....

Also expect some nice videos from me , as i've found some friends willing to shoot HD 60fps, and my new Beretta 686 can't wait for the season to start

-- Edited by MagnumMagpie on Monday 9th of July 2012 08:57:03 PM

Hi Mark,

I've tried out many different ways over the years (trial & error) and have used the same type of setup for more years than I care to remember.

Here are a few slight variations to my setup:

Hi Mark,

Great topic for the board! 

We recently brought a couple of the Assault Crow Decoys from Ure-A-Duck Decoys - http://www.ureaduck.com/crow-decoys-assault-series.html for first time deployment with the TCP this fall.  Recommended by Skip, we think these will prove useful.

Our ecaller turntable and "Hot Stick" (great idea by Big Honkers) proved effective last season so they will get more play this year.

I picked up a Primos "Crusher" blind last year, but we never used it.  When my SWR Spectre II rimfire suppressor gets here after ATF processing, I envision hiding in that with my suppressed Volquartsen .17 HMR along side of Texas Matt and his suppressed Savage HB barrel .17 HMR in our high tech crow pillbox configuration.

Hunt safe,

Puppypopper wrote:

---

GB, Skip Woody recommended decoys ? What ? NO! Wait till we have lunch again.

Goal for this season. The 17 hmr is coming out of the closet. Other than that I am going to concentrate more on hand calling than I am my Fox Pro.

---

Skip is like me I think, very open to trying new things if it will improve the odds, and accepting them if they prove to work. We are never to old to learn, and sometimes others come up with ideas us older guys have thought about, but for some reason never got round to solving. So, although we know most things, we NEVER claim to know it all.

All great information from everyone. 

-- Edited by Mark on Wednesday 11th of July 2012 12:47:06 PM

Here are two more photos as long as we are on this subject.

The photo of the crows going up the embankment was taken the next day when I had better lighting for the photo. Over 500 were shot on a solo hunt, the coyotes ate over a hundred of them just over night. There are 386 in the photo.

The next photo is a hunt later in the year in February.

Bob A.

True! I do not typically use decoys.. as I am mostly hidden in the woods.. decoys simply cannot be seen by crows at a distance.. BUT.. last year I started using a 'feathered" crow. It is very realistic.. covered almost just like a crow would be covered with feathers. A flexible wire.. attached to each foot.. make it very easy to mount on just about any twigg or limb. Crows treat this decoy different. I am not sure how or why.. but they do. Perhaps their eye sight is so good.. the see the realism of this bird.. and are fooled. I only use one... easy to carry..easy to place near my hide. I try to find a relatively open place.. in the canopy.. so oncoming birds will see this guy.. and come in with full confidence. Once in place, the bird sits upright.. alert.. just like a real bird.  Again, there is something different about this decoy..  a difference not noted with virtually every other decoy I or we..have ever used.

Gadget has shown the website..ureaduck..etc.. where I got this guy. These were imported from South America..  he only had a few of them...and I am not sure if he ever ordered more. By all means.. give him a shout.

Skip

I buy the chep unflocked ones and pull a black thin sock over them.
Drill a 10 mm hole at the throat, pull the sock over from the tailside, leave the beak free, and stuff the rest of the sock in the drilled hole. Easy to clean, cheaper and more durable than the flock...

Mark:

The big "Aha!" moment I had last season was to micro-manage the tendancy of crows to avoid damaging fires.  

Everyone within the sound of your crow calling knows not to shoot up a roost.

The TCP hunts pecan orchards and some of those are hundreds of acres. Late last winter, Gadget Bob and I set up in some agricultural buildings, initially for some coyote calling but we had to divert our efforts to the many crows transiting the area.

For a couple of hours, we received a steady stream of crows from predictable flight paths, in flights of from one to five, with most being pairs, and we put the Texas Hurt on them.  Good thing Gadget brought along plenty of ammo becauses I needed the benefit of his largess! 

The Texas Crow Patrol had hunted that orchard many times but without that singular success.  

The difference?  We weren't in the orchard or against the hard wood creeks on the perimeters as usual.  Now, we did have a great sentry deke on the top of a really long pole that Gadget had acquired and that was the compliment to Bob's fine Fox Pro equipment and calls that provided the focus of in-bound crows.  Our kill zone was located no closer that 150 yards and no farther than 300 yards from the creek that coursed through the orchard.  All of the crows that were drawn to our kill zone came from the creek and those avenues constituted approximately 150 degrees of arc.

The flyway rules are to observe but don't disturb the flyways proper with gun fire; rather, locate your killing zones a few hundred yards off the flyway but within crowular earshot of your calls.  That way, you don't perturb the bulk of the crow crowd but you will incite the aggressive members of the crow train.  And you'll be presented with crows coming in on expected tangents.  I believe fervently that we need to apply that general rule to any local flyway the crows use next to commonly used food sources.

Pecan orchards in Texas habitate bottom land.  Crows, being efficient predators, want to fly the lowest, so their flight paths are typically overlaid on the creeks.

Based on that recent experience, the best crow shooting in pecan orchards or other food sources like corn fields would be a few hundred yards off the flight paths of crows. Think "low"; think blue lines and locate your kill zone within earshot of that flight path.  If you do that, have sentry dekes, good calling and are well hidden, you should be presented targets in a stream as steady as the crows are flying on that flyway.  A couple of crows every two and a half minutes for two hours is more fun than a hundred in two flights!

Bring plenty of ammo!

-- Edited by Lone Star Phil on Monday 16th of July 2012 01:51:05 AM

-- Edited by Lone Star Phil on Monday 16th of July 2012 01:54:17 AM

Shot this fellow a few seasons back and he fell to earth with his mouth / beak full... Killed him with #6's. If he had been shot with 8's he would have most likely spit the nut out before he hit the ground..